Heat wave triggers warnings across South
Communities from Houston to New Orleans opened cooling centers to bring relief as steamy hot temperatures settled across a broad swath of the U.S. South on Saturday, and beachgoers fled a waterspout that swept ashore on a Florida beach.
Gov. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, visited Perryton in the Texas Panhandle, where officials said more than 1,000 customers were left without electricity after a tornado killed three people late Thursday. The Perryton Ochiltree Chamber of Commerce said it would open a cooling center in the town of 8,000 people, about 115 miles northeast of Amarillo, to counteract the effects of the high temperatures that followed the storm.
“At times of events like these, Texans come together,” Abbott told reporters as he signed a disaster declaration that would “trigger all the resources the state can bring to bear … to accelerate the ability to rebuild.”
The Republican governor said he was shocked to see how much of the town had been destroyed and praised what he called “nonstop heroic efforts by health care providers” who he said treated 160 injured people at the local hospital that has just 25 beds.
W. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, warned that more severe weather was forecast for the area late Saturday, bringing rain, high winds and possibly more tornadoes.
The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings through Saturday night along the Gulf Coast from Brownsville, Texas, to Houston. It said heat indexes ranged from nearly 115 degrees Fahrenheit in Houston to nearly 120 F in Brownsville and Corpus Christi. Cooling shelters were set up in cities along the coast and farther inland for residents left without electricity.
“What’s really going is the humidity,” said Allison Prater, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth, Texas. “That’s making the heat index, or the ‘feels like’ temperature really skyrocket.”
Prater said the air temperature Saturday in the Dallas area could reach 94 F, but high humidity would make it feel like 105 F.
“The reason we’re having such heat is there is a lot of moisture being pulled up from the Gulf of Mexico,” Prater said. “That’s working with the warmer temperatures to induce … that ‘feels like’ temperature.”
Two women and an 11-year-old boy died when the tornado slammed into Perryton. On Saturday, authorities upgraded the intensity of the twister to EF3, saying it packed winds of up to 140 mph.
Ochiltree County Sheriff Terry Bouchard told KVII-TV in Amarillo that missing people had been located.
“There’s just a lot of damage to our community and it’s going to take some time to get this cleaned up,” Bouchard said.
Storm-related power outages were also reported in East Texas late Friday, ahead of a weekend promising sweltering days of high temperatures and high humidity.
In Louisiana, the National Weather Service projected daytime temperatures through Monday at about 94 F with high humidity and heat index values as high as 112 F.
Entergy New Orleans and the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans suspended electricity shut-offs for delinquent accounts through Tuesday.
In Florida, city officials in Clearwater said in an email that a waterspout came ashore Friday afternoon “sending beach-related items flying into the air” and injuring two people from Kansas.
Authorities said the 70-year-old woman and 63-year-old man were treated for minor injuries at a local hospital. Their identities were not made public.
The National Weather Service in Miami issued a heat advisory through 7 p.m. Saturday for most of the south Florida area, where the combination of heat and humidity was forecast to reach a “feels like” temperature of 105 F.
“Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses to occur,” the service reported. The air temperature in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was expected to reach about 92 degrees Saturday.